


Sleep Now In The Fire

by stellardarlings



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Brief mention of suicide ideation, Dragon!Kylo, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:35:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26412775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellardarlings/pseuds/stellardarlings
Summary: Follow the lava, her master told her. It will lead you to your prey.This is her final test. If she succeeds, she’ll become a fully-fledged mage, granted her own sword and freed from the bonds of her training with Snoke. If she fails—If she fails, she won’t live to see the consequences.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 22
Kudos: 80
Collections: To Rapture the Earth and the Seas: the 2020 Reylo Fanfiction Anthology





	Sleep Now In The Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This is my contribution to the 2020 Reylo Fanfiction Anthology: To Rapture the Earth and Seas, with a theme of lava. I hope you enjoy this brief journey into this world where magic is real and here be dragons.
> 
> Many thanks to my beta Reylonging, who was instrumental in shaping this story at very short notice when my original idea for this collection wasn't working out. None of my Reylo fic would be what it is without her input and brainstorming. Also thanks to the RFFA mods [politicalmamaduck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/politicalmamaduck/pseuds/politicalmamaduck) and [crossingwinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter) for their feedback, as well as the mods for their hard work in pulling this together.

Rey walks beside a river of blood.

At least, that’s what it looks like in the tunnel’s low light: an eerie flow of viscous red pulp creeping across the black rock at the gulley bottom. Rey knows it’s actually far more dangerous than that—the hot lava would melt her flesh down to the bone if she touched or fell into it. Despite that, this blood of the earth still isn’t the most dangerous thing down here.

The air around her shimmers from the heat, but she doesn’t feel it with her shields up to protect her from the searing air. It means the sword in her hand remains cold—icy and alert against her skin—though she’s not sure how much of that is its own magic. Even still, her hand is clammy around the hilt, beads of sweat rolling down the back of her neck and spine, the twin influences of that unnerving magic and her fear keeping her skin flushed and her heart thumping ferociously against her ribs.

Her shields also dull her presence, allowing her to creep around the tunnels without detection until she’s found her quarry.

_ Follow the lava, _ her master told her.  _ It will lead you to your prey _ .

This is her final test. If she succeeds, she’ll become a fully-fledged mage, granted her own sword and freed from the bonds of her training with Snoke. If she fails—

If she fails, she won’t live to see the consequences. There’s a sad comfort in that notion, a quiet ease in knowing that whatever happens, she won’t find herself cast out, abandoned back on the Jakku streets with her magic stripped from her veins.

She doesn’t fear losing the magic as much as she fears being on her own again without any sense of her place in the world, facing endless days of isolation among the junk and detritus of the desert.

Her boots’ soft wool and leather keep her footfalls quiet, but her own breathing sounds harsh and loud in her own ears against the low, deep bubbling of the lava. Surprise is her only advantage, even with the sword. She’s heard the stories: eyes that can see in the blackest of shadows, teeth and claws like daggers, a scalding breath and razor-sharp reflexes. Rey is but an average-sized woman with average abilities—at least according to her master.

The tunnel takes a sharp bend, and Rey steels herself to follow it. The sooner she faces her fear, the sooner this will all be over. Sword aloft, she presses herself to the hard stone of the tunnel wall, peering around the edge to see what lies on the other side.

It’s a cavern, as high and wide as the cathedral nave in the great city. So high, in fact, that its ceiling is lost to shadows, though crystals stud the rock, glittering like stars. It should be utterly dark, aside from the fiery coral glow from the lava, which is a slim vein running across one edge of the floor. Instead small lights flicker, the warm yellow of tallow flames, and it takes Rey a moment to process that there are candles clustered along one wall of the cave.

The cavern appears empty except for a large, misshapen rock formation at the base of the wall, and the candles themselves. They’re a curious, uncanny detail she wasn’t expecting, but it’s one she shoves to the back of her mind while she peers into the space for any sight of her target. It wouldn’t do to let her attention wander and her guard down. 

Satisfied she can proceed, she steps into the cavern, sword aloft and shields high.

On the far side, the tunnel branches into three, but the lava doesn’t flow down any of them. She has no idea which path to take when she reaches the other side.

As she inches deeper into the space, she feels as much as hears a low rumble, the scrape of rock on rock. It’s a new note against the ever-present lava flow. She pauses, glancing around, but can see nothing alarming. The noise must be coming from elsewhere in the tunnels—she prays to gods she isn’t sure she believes in that she isn’t about to be caught in an earthquake or cave-in.

The sound crescendos and Rey’s heartbeat races in response. She picks up her pace across the cavern, casting a wary glance over her shoulder in case she was followed inside, but there’s nothing there. It’s still just her in an empty cave with some suspicious candles and an old, glistening lava formation the size of an oxen.

Which, when she looks back, she’s sure has shifted. There’s part of the formation poking out now, a long, spiked trail across the floor. 

Blade high, she shuffles sideways. It’s not moving—it can’t be moving. It’s a trick of the light, the flickering glow from the candles confusing her eyes.

But the rock is rising. It keeps rising, unfolding and unfurling until it pushes itself onto its feet, towering over Rey, far bigger than any oxen she’s ever seen. Twice as big, lashing its jagged tail behind it, crimson eyes blazing and fixed on Rey. A dragon.

Kylo Ren.

Everything about him is sharp. His body is covered in pointed black scales that glister in the candlelight, overlaying each other like plate armor and looking as tough to pierce. His enormous head is ringed by a barbed crown of spikes on his neck, and those spikes follow the ridge of his spine down to the tip of his tail. Tooth and claw wait to be unleashed, shining like polished metal, even the wings tucked against his body tipped in talons as long as Rey’s forearm.

He’s everything she was led to believe he would be.  _ Worse _ . The sword is going to be completely inadequate against him. 

Rey is going to die here.

But he doesn’t move yet, tipping his head to one side like he’s examining Rey. Then he opens his mouth.

“It’s you.”

Rey almost drops the sword at the sound of the deep voice, which vibrates through the cave and up through her feet into her body. She wasn’t expecting the dragon to speak. Nor had she anticipated the intelligence in his eyes, the level stare that makes it clear this is not a mindless beast ready to devour anything that stumbles across its path. 

She tightens her grip around the hilt and keeps the blade steady. 

“Me?”

Kylo Ren dips his head in an approximation of a nod. “I knew he’d send somebody. Eventually.”

This is a distraction. He clearly intends to toy with Rey until he’s ready to kill her, and she can’t allow any fight to begin on his terms. She wishes she had her old staff—the sword feels all wrong in her hands and she’ll need to get in very close to strike a killing blow at his throat or belly. If only the staff would be any match for a dragon.

“I have no wish to harm you,” Kylo Ren continues when she doesn’t reply, and he sounds tired, of all things.

“I wish I could say the same. But you cannot be allowed to remain a scourge on the land.”

The dragon makes an amused hum, low and resonant, and even that sound rings with a bone-deep exhaustion. “Is that what they’re calling me?”

“You keep taking people’s cattle—”

“Everybody has to eat.” His tail swishes, smacking against the wall and sending chips of stone shattering to the floor. His eyes remain unblinking, like somebody has taken ladlefuls of liquid fire and poured them into the beast’s head, centered with glowing coals—bright and unnerving and impossible to look away from.

Rey knows what she has to do. 

She shifts her stance, carefully balanced on her feet and ready to move. “I have a task to complete. I will prove my worth as a mage to my mas—” 

Mid-word she reaches out with her powers, exploding the nearest candles so that hot fat spatters across the cavern. Rey’s shields protect her, and Kylo Ren doesn’t so much as flinch when the tallow sprays across his body—but it does distract him. It’s only a moment, but it’s all Rey needs.

She leaps forward, raising the sword high above her head and slashing it down towards Kylo Ren’s face. She’s aiming for his eye—trying to drive the blade straight through—but he twists out of the way. Instead the sword glances down the side of his head, carving across his eye and cheek. As it does, the eye turns from burning red to warm, golden brown.

Time slows to the consistency of thick honey, the seconds suspended in a bubble of amber.

In her mind’s eye, she can see him. Not as he stands before her, but as he was when he was a man. She doesn’t understand how she knows it’s him, but she does—the figure in her mind is the same as the beast in front of her. He was tall and broad, an imposing sight even without the dragon power thrumming through him, though he was an exceptionally powerful mage. She can practically taste the rich essence of his magic. Dark hair, dark eyes, large features in a pale, narrow face. The face stuns her, but it’s gone as soon as the sword slices away from his skin.

He is roaring with pain, so loud that it’s like waves crashing against rock, echoing around the cavern. Her shields collapse at the same time she does, landing hard on her rump. The heat crowds in on her without the shields, but it’s nothing compared to what she just felt. 

“I know you,” she gasps, trying to draw the air back into her lungs after it was knocked out by her fall and her surprise. 

It’s true—now she isn’t protected against the feel of him, he’s all she can sense. Angry and hurting— _ fire, he’s all fire _ —but her soul recognizes him. He’s a bass note that’s been humming in the back of her head all her life, steady and strong and waiting to be heard. Like a bell rung years ago that’s still not quietened.

Sometimes it was the only thing keeping her anchored to the world, on the lonely days and nights when she didn’t see or speak to another living soul. Even in the tedium of Snoke’s training, where she hadn’t been entirely alone but felt as forsaken as she’d been in Jakku, she’d heard that note and listened to it in the quiet times. She was never sure if she imagined it to stop the loneliness from driving her out of her head entirely.

Kylo settles back on his haunches and she’s able to see the wound she’s created, the jagged gash that oozes lava. His eye is undamaged and his gaze returns to her, less resolute now. He looks as unsettled as she feels.

“And I you,” he replies.

The sword is still in her hand, his blood coating the blade. Beads of it drip down into the hollow core, ready to be transported back to her master, and she can feel its hunger pulsing. She drops it like it’s burning her. 

“I’m sorry—I didn’t know. If I had I wouldn’t have…” She fumbles, grasping for the right thing to say. “I saw you! The real you. How?”

“The sword—it belongs to me. It showed you my true form.” 

“I don’t feel your magic,” she tells him. She pushes herself onto her knees, and he sinks lower, so his head is level with hers. There is still so much space between them, but Rey thinks he’s more afraid of her now than she is of him. It doesn’t make any sense, but she wants to soothe that fear, in the same way his presence on the edge of her mind soothes hers.

“I don’t have it in this form.” He sniffs the sword, backing away after he inhales. “Name your master.”

She has to clear her throat before she can say it. “Snoke.”

He fixes that stare on her again, the edges of his wound already almost sealed together. 

“He was mine, once,” he says. “Before I grew too powerful and he feared I would usurp him.”

Rey’s breath catches as she begins to put the pieces together. “He did this to you—”

“Yes. He urged me to learn how to shapeshift, then trapped me in this shape, stripped of my magic. And now he’s sent you to end it completely.”

The hand that was holding the sword flexes. “Why?”

His body ripples in a peculiar movement, like he’s tried to shrug but forgotten he doesn’t have human shoulders to do it. The tallow has dripped away, leaving him unblemished, and when he moves the light catches on his scales, making them glow faintly golden. He’s fearsome, but there’s a strange kind of beauty to him, too.

“You feel it, don’t you?” he asks, voice as soft as it can be. “The bond between us.”

It’s true. It’s there, an invisible web of connections that’s always been there, stitched into the fabric of her being. She’s always assumed this was a part of her magic, her powers reaching out into the world, but now she understands the threads were always anchored in another being. Rey only had to find him.

“Yes,” she replies, equally as soft. “I feel like it’s always been there.”

“I think it has. It’s why Snoke picked you.” He slumps down even further, lying on his belly and resting his head on his forearms. It brings him closer to her, and she stays where she is, exhilarated by the nearness. “I’ve heard of such things, but never seen it. Never thought I would experience it.”

“We share a soul,” Rey murmurs. She’s heard it too, in nonsense tales written to send children off to sleep. She shuffles closer to Kylo, her robe shifting as she does. His nostrils flare and she winces, all too aware of the grime coating her skin, the sweat soaking through her clothes.

His words surprise her.

“You smell like the desert.”

Rey’s not sure the desert has a particular smell, even after living there for so many years—but it’s better than whatever else he might sense on her. She nods. “It’s where Snoke found me. I was a foundling, sent to work in the wastes of Jakku until my powers manifested.”

“You were so alone.” His tone is wistful, and Rey feels it like an ache in her chest. 

“So were you.”

She was friendless as a foundling, abandoned and unwanted even by the other children who shied away from the strange things that happened around her. Snoke later explained those were early manifestations of her magic, bursting out of her in moments of high emotion. It made her an unlikely prospect for fostering or adoption, and in the end she was sent to Jakku under the dubious care of a man called Unkar Plutt, to pick through the bones of wreckage out in the sands. When Snoke found her, she hoped that finally someone finally came for her who’d care for her like the families who took the other foundlings. Instead she ended up shuttered behind Snoke’s cold castle walls, where nobody considered her worthy of their time or respect until she was a fully fledged mage. 

Kylo understood, because Kylo had served his time in the castle as well. 

Rey lifts her hand—not the one that touched the sword—and reaches out for him. She can’t control the tremor running through her arm; fear, but not fear of what he is capable of doing to her in all his awesome being. This is the ache in her chest spreading through her bones, across her skin. For once, there is something more terrifying to her than failing Snoke’s test and being stripped of her magic.

Kylo doesn’t move, watching her hand as it descends onto his snout, and it seems like he’s holding his breath. Rey thinks she is too.

He’s hot to the touch. Not painfully so—not burning hot—but warmer than the skin of a man. She closes her eyes, feeling the answering note from her soul ring in harmony with his. 

She doesn’t see him this time, but it doesn’t matter. She knows him and that’s enough; he has as many sharp edges inside as out, fierce and thorny and so, so scared. He’s lonely too, but his loneliness goes back for far more years than hers—he’s been trapped like this, down here, since before she was born, and all the years he spent with Snoke he was isolated, friendless. Hiding behind the mask of a mage and warrior to protect his vulnerable center, hoping that if he could prove himself truly powerful people would like him. He’s the other side of the mirror inside her.

Rey. He lifts her name out of her mind, sighing it back to her. It’s more than a word—it shines, a shaft of sunlight, exactly how she feels to him

And there, hidden underneath all of his armor, is his real name. Ben.

Her face is wet, her throat tight when Rey opens her eyes. She’s ready to press her other hand against him—to hold however much of him her tiny body can push up against without hurting herself—but his gaze has become sharp and shrewd.

“Your task—what is it?”

She wipes the tears away from her skin, pushing herself backwards far enough so she can see both of his eyes. “I’m to kill you and capture your blood in the sword to take back to him.”

He hisses. “He wants you to kill me with my own sword!”

“That doesn’t matter now,” she insists. “Obviously I’m not going to do that. Besides, I don’t need to kill you; the sword already has your blood—that will be enough to prove to Snoke that I passed the test.”

“And in doing so, you’ll give him what he really wants. My magic, and yours.”

She rocks back on her heels. “What?”

“My blood is the key to the magic held in our soul bond. We’re stronger together than we are separately—and you are stronger on your own than you realize, stronger than he’s ever let you know. If you take that sword to him, he’ll be able to take our combined powers.”

“Then I won’t take the sword back to him. I’ll find a way to get you out of this form and we’ll be free of him.”

“Rey.” Somehow even when he speaks out loud, the way he says her name is filled with golden light. “Sweetheart.” And oh, how that makes her heart sing. “I am cursed. Only Snoke knows how to break it, and he will never, ever say how.”

“Then I’ll kill him. That will lift it.”

“You’re not a killer. No. The solution is clear,” he says gravely. “You must kill me.”

“What? No!” She surges to her feet. “You think I couldn’t live with myself if I killed Snoke, but that I could live with killing you? You are the other half of my soul—”

“And it is only right that my soul should reside in you. If you kill me, you’ll be able to take my magic for yourself. We’re already connected, and it will prevent my death from weakening you. With it you’ll be able to defeat Snoke on your own.”

“But I don’t want to face him on my own!” she protests. “I don’t want to kill you.”

“You should. It will be a mercy.”

The world blurs as fresh tears well up—angry tears, spiked with heat. “That makes no sense.”

“My blood is lava. Every moment of my existence is a torment, and I cannot leave these caves for very long or the pain increases. If I had found a way of ending it myself, I’d have done it, but I am immune even to what flows through my veins.”

She backs away from the sword on shaky legs. “You have no right to ask this of me!”

She’s only just found him—her other half. She’s only just been given a glimpse of what she could have, what she’s been yearning for all these years—and he wants her to sacrifice that?

But she can feel it. She felt it when she touched him, the way fire licks through him, no inch of him spared from the pain. He shielded her from the worst of it but he couldn’t keep it all from her, like acid pulsing through his flesh.

“I can stay here,” she pleads. “With you.”

“No, you can’t. This place isn’t meant for a human. Please, Rey—release me.”

She swallows around the hard lump in her throat. He rolls onto his side, exposing his soft underbelly, and where she once thought those eyes were pure hellfire, now she is able to see how human they really are—how he is pleading for her to help him.

What a terrible existence this has been for him. Would she be any better than Snoke if she forced him to keep suffering for her own benefit? Is soothing her own loneliness more important than ending his torment?

There is one clear way out of the curse—the sacrifice stories always demand. This one, she will make. For him.

Before her resolve fails, she retrieves the sword from where it fell. Even now the metal is startlingly cold. His blood has dried on the tip of the blade, brighter than human blood.

Brighter than her own, she realizes. 

Rey wants to lay a comforting hand on him, but dares not. “Can you close your eyes?”

“Of course,” he hums, obliging. “I wish we’d known each other properly.”

“You’re not supposed to make wishes out loud.”

She watches his throat move as he swallows, his belly rising and falling as he breathes. He looks—and feels—peaceful, and there’s nothing more she can ask for than that. She wants to close her own eyes, but that wouldn’t work at all. Instead she checks his eyes are shut, the light completely obscured so he cannot see what he’s about to do. She takes a deep breath—and slices the tip of the blade across the palm of her hand.

Rey hisses as the blood wells, forming a fist to make sure it drips from the wound and into the core of the blade, mingling with Ben’s blood. Hot steam sizzles up from the metal, then it frosts over like a windowpane in winter.

“Rey?” Ben’s eyes are open once more—and brown again. “What are you—”

His question is a cut off in a wail. He convulses and Rey drops the sword in horror, watching as the blade shatters into tiny fragments.

“Ben!” Something is very wrong—his flesh is pulsing, rippling, the scales falling away from his body. It’s like he’s melting, and as he does so, his blood pours out, hot lava sinking into the floor and carving tiny welts into the stone before evaporating. He’s screaming; the bell in the back of her mind tolls in alarm.

One of his front claws topples from his foot, hitting the ground with a metallic clang. The rest of the foot shrivels, skin turning to leather before Rey’s eyes. His head sinks into the shell of his body like his spine can’t contain its weight anymore, and the spikes from that spine splinter free, collapsing into the space where his mighty form stood only moments before.

It only takes seconds. Rey rushes towards him but already the movement has stopped, silence falling. 

“ _ No! _ ” 

This wasn’t meant to happen—she’d thought this was going to work. She tears through the pile of scales, claws and teeth, elbow-deep in hot sludge that tries to bind it all together. It slows her progress as she pushes the scales and remnants of dragon flesh aside, refusing to accept that her gamble has killed him.

Her hand brushes against something warm and soft—something entirely un-dragonlike—and she digs until it’s uncovered.

Underneath the wreckage of his former body, lies a human man. A very naked human man, whose chest rises and falls with the rhythm of his breathing.

“Ben,” Rey breathes, shoving aside the last scales, and his eyes flutter, his face turning towards the sound of her voice. She cradles his head in her hands.

It’s hard to tell how old he is, his face boyish despite the last vestiges of pain on his brow. It’s a strong brow—all of his features are strong. Nose, lips, prominent cheekbones, even the ears peeking through his hair. They all seem incongruously large but they work in harmony. His skin shines pale as starlight, scattered with freckles and moles, and his crown of spikes has been replaced by a thick cloud of dark hair, which looks soft to the touch. As soft as his plump lips appear.

As soft as his eyes when he opens them. The remaining candlelight casts them with an amber glow, lighter than they’d appeared before. His left eye and cheek is still bisected by the scar she’d given him with the sword, a silver ridge across his skin that appears weeks or months old.

“Rey?” he asks, nuzzling into her palm. He’s as sweat-drenched as she is, but she doesn’t care. His magic is present now as well, heady and vivid, cocooning her. His touch reignites the connection between them, letting the silky edges of his thoughts brush up against hers just like his hair is caressing her fingers. This is why she didn’t touch him before she cut herself, knowing he’d read it in her mind and try to stop her. 

They don’t really know each other, but it doesn’t matter, because they do. 

He sits up, wincing as he does, and it draws her attention away from his face to everything else. He is big for a man, with a warrior’s shoulders, but she tries to keep her gaze focused above his collarbone no matter how inviting his broad chest muscles seem. She’s seen plenty of men in various stages of undress in Jakku, but none this close up.

“How did you know what to do?” He can’t seem to stay still, stretching his arms and jiggling his legs, touching his skin like it’s a revelation—even if his attention never leaves her.

“Haven’t you ever heard of breaking a curse with true love?” she says, making quick work of removing her outer-robe to drape over his waist and legs. “It was either mingle our blood or sacrifice myself—and I didn’t want to try that first.”

His eyes have gone very, very wide. “True love?”

“Well.” She licks her lips, suddenly aware of how cracked they’ve become in the heat. His look pink and full in comparison, and his eyes follow her tongue. “If we share a soul, it seemed—”

“Yes.” When he meets her gaze again, it feels like he can see into her soul without the magic. It’s intense and electric, his stare, and she is unable—unwilling—to break free of it. Somehow he manages to encompass the presence of a dragon even in his human state.

She clears her throat. “Oh. Good.”

He shifts again, still restless, although he doesn’t look away from her. “Do you have somewhere we can go? I don’t want to spend another second down here if I don’t have to.”

“I know a place.”

She turns her back, giving him privacy to fashion the robe into something wearable, and when he steps beside her, his torso is still unclothed, kissed golden in the low light. The cloth is instead wrapped snugly around his waist like she’d seen warriors from the mountains wear. 

Her cheeks are on fire, but she can blame that on the cavern’s heat. He towers over her, his dark, burnished curls long enough to brush against his shoulders. They leave in silence, but his hand finds hers, looping their fingers together so she can hear the quiet murmuring of his thoughts as they move, following the path out of the tunnels.

_ Sweet Rey _ — _ your magic is glorious.You marked me—you chose me _ . It doesn’t let the heat in her cheeks diminish at all. But there’s an underlying thread, a hint of trepidation, thoughts he tries to shroud when she catches hold of them.

He’s never felt good enough—for anyone. Despite his stature, despite all his might, becoming a dragon had been his way of becoming something truly incredible. And he’d succeeded, for a hefty toll. But now that he’s a man once more, he’s wondering if he is worthy of Rey in this form.

_ Stop that!  _ she demands.  _ If you are the other half of my soul, what does that say about me? _

That makes him angry. _ Don’t. You’re perfect, completely perfect— _

_ Well then. I guess that makes you perfect too. _

He doesn’t want to accept that, but she’s not going to let him go down that path with his thoughts. And Rey knows she’s far from perfect; he’ll learn all about her rough edges soon enough. 

“I saw how you looked at me when I was Kylo,” he says out loud. “The awe.”

She can’t put her reply into words, so she throws him an echo of how this form makes her feel, and he stumbles beside her when it reaches him.

“Oh.”

“Exactly. I liked the dragon form, but I like you like this more.”

“You know, I can still shapeshift. And I won’t get stuck this time, not if you’re around to help ease the transition.”

She shoots a bright grin his way. “Then Snoke is going to get quite the shock, isn’t he?”

But the reminder of Snoke sends her thoughts down a different road. What happened down here was both a victory and a defeat. She came out of it with a greater reward than she ever expected, but she’s also not going to claim the prize she’s worked so hard towards either.

The landscape when they emerge is significantly cooler than the tunnels. Night has set while Rey was inside, the moons rising to spill their quicksilver light across the desolate terrain. A sea of black rock appears to surround them for miles, but Rey knows it’s not a long walk back to the hostelry she was staying in, and she silently urges Ben not to worry.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, picking up on her change in mood.

“Nothing.”

He places a finger below her chin, tipping her face towards his. “That’s not true.”

Rey sighs. “I’m sad that without passing the final test, I will never be a real mage.”

Ben’s mouth twitches upwards on one side—the closest he’s come to a smile yet. It’s a tender expression.

“Sweetheart, there is no test. That was Snoke’s lie. You were born a mage and it’s not something Snoke can approve or deny you.” He squeezes her hand. “And once we’ve beaten him, we’ll have full access to his library. The greatest collection of books the world has ever seen—what we don’t already know, we’ll teach each other.”

“You mean that?”

“I do.”

Before long the rock below their feet turns to fine, inky soil, their path lined by small, round walled gardens the size of wagon wheels, vines creeping serpentine across the ground. If there’s one thing this part of the land is known for, it’s the quality of the food that grows here. In the distance, she can hear waves breaking against cliffs, the breeze carrying the faintest scent of brine and seaweed.

Rey shows Ben the little outhouse she was sleeping in, but he sweeps her past it, knocking on the door of the hostelry and waking the owners despite the late hour. One look at his imposing form, a few quick instructions from him, and they’re in the grandest guest room with a meal brought up to them. 

Rey finds herself crossed-legged on an overstuffed armchair surrounded by plates of food: fresh fish, rich cheeses, fluffy bread, an assortment of vegetables, and a sharp, tangy oil drizzled over all of it, plus local wine to wash it down with. It’s the best meal she’s ever eaten, far better than anything she’d had in the foundling hospital, in Jakku, or as Snoke’s apprentice. If it weren’t for the volcano, Rey would happily stay in this part of the land for the food alone.

Ben eats as much as she does, but his attention never strays far from her. It seems he’s hungry for something else, his focus on her mouth as she continues to empty the contents of the platters into it. 

“What?” she pauses mid-chew, before remembering it’s impolite to speak with your mouth full and swallowing it down.

“You’re lovely.”

Rey doubts that, given she’s been wiping the oil that’s dribbled down her chin off with the sleeve of her under-robe, but she finds herself smiling and ducking her head down anyway.

“Tomorrow we’ll need to set out and find Snoke,” he continues, and his furrowed brow sparks a frown of Rey’s own. “While we have the element of surprise. Once he knows I am no longer cursed, he’ll do whatever he can to destroy us.”

“I don’t want to think about that tonight,” Rey says, setting her plate aside. She reaches out her hand for his and he takes it, bringing it to sit loosely on his thigh.

“You know there are—” she watches his throat move as he swallows “—rituals that acknowledge the bond between us. Magical and not.”

She thinks she understands what he means, and squeezes his hand. “I think I just want to be held. For tonight.”

He doesn’t look disappointed, twining their fingers together as he pulls her closer. “Then that works. Because I’d like to hold you.”

From somewhere, Rey finds a last stitch of bravery. She thought she’d used it all up, entering the dragon’s lair and then adding her blood to the sword, but she does have a little bit more left.

She surges forward, pressing her lips to his.

He makes a muffled noise of surprise, a faint  _ oomph _ , and then his arms are around her, achingly gentle for someone so big. When her bravery and her experience falter, he takes over, showing her how sweet it is to move her mouth against his, just so. Nimble fingers curl into her hair and undo the loops until it falls down around her neck. She follows suit, using her grip to pull him even closer, an eager and impatient student.

When they part, he is smiling, and he is still smiling when they curl up together to sleep.

She wakes in the cradle of Ben’s arms, and it should be a surprise, an alarming change, but it isn’t. It’s new and strange but he’s as familiar to her as her own breath.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) where I reblog pretty Reylo art and share teasers for my WIPs.


End file.
